Sliced Bread: Should it Really be the Gold Standard for ‘The Best Thing Since…’ ?

 

The expression ‘The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’ seems to be on everyone's lips in the UK media nowadays, and has even been adopted as the title of a documentary radio series on Radio 4. 

Whenever I hear it used to describe yet another ‘wonder-product’, I have to ask myself where on earth it came from….

As it stands, the phrase implies that the process of slicing bread during its manufacture really does represent an improvement over ‘prior art’ (presumably this would have been un-sliced bread).

The nearest I’ve come to an explanation for this somewhat inexplicable enthusiasm in the past for sliced bread as a ‘new and revolutionary' product is that housewives* in the 1950s were so fed up with having to slice their loaves themselves that they couldn’t wait for someone else to do it for them.

To my mind, slicing bread as part of its manufacturing process has some notable disadvantages – let’s take a look at a few of them:

1)      1) The slicing process introduces fungal spores which are always present in the surrounding air and on solid surfaces into the body of the loaf. This will hasten the development of blue mould. Although wheat bread mold rarely produces toxins, the fungal mycelium does produce 'off flavours' even before its spores becomes visible and quickly spreads throughout the loaf. (NB this innocuous character does not apply to rye bread mould which can produce ergot alkaloids which are toxic and have profound effects on blood pressure.)

The average sliced loaf left at a typical room temperature of ca 20oC will start to mould within 1-2 days, (and many of discovered as young adults when we started living independently) is beginning to look decidedly ‘green’ after 3-4 days. A well-crusted un-sliced loaf will keep for much longer than this since its interior will remain effectively sterile after its high temperature treatment in the baking oven. The crust will also resist fungal incursion due to its hard, dry character, particularly if it is kept in a cool dry place. It will also retain the loaf's moisture a lot better.

2)      2) The dough mixture for a ‘standard sliced white’ is liberally laced with a host of preservatives and emulsifiers - these are essential to enable reproducible machine-slicing and prevent crumbling of the product thereafter.

Emulsifiers, and highly processed foods generally, have long been implicated as possible health risks – only this week the readout from a pilot short-term study performed at Kings College, London showed clear increases in body weight, blood sugar and lipid levels in volunteers fed a highly processed diet for just 2 weeks. These increases are known to be associated with increased health risks. A cohort of subjects on a low-processed diet did not show similar increases.  While these effects appear to be reversible, in the short term at least, and the results don’t exactly indicate that sliced bread, or indeed processed food generally (when consumed in moderation!) is a ‘killer’, this type of study does suggest the potential for cumulative dietary harm and poses the question as to whether we, and our offspring, are really eating healthily enough.

3)     3) Apart from any health concerns we might have, the 'ultra-processing' that the ingredients of a standard white loaf are subjected to seems to remove much of the taste. The cheaper sliced browns are marginally better but often have a gritty consistency due to the cheaper flour mixes used.

The increased exposure to air and the oxidation that brings probably doesn’t help conserve flavour elements. It can also introduce a bitter taste as the various additives progressively oxidise and generate by-products.

4)     4) To stand any chance of making a sliced loaf last more than a day or two during the summer months, it’s necessary to keep it in the coldest area of a fridge compartment. The condensation within its impermeable plastic wrapping this causes often results in water-logging; in some cases the consistency of the product after storage in the fridge can be reminiscent of a wet sponge.

Now, I’m not encouraging the abolition of sliced bread here, you understand – it can be a real godsend in situations where the paraphernalia of bread knives, breadboards, bread bins, etc. that are required to deal with an un-sliced loaf properly just aren’t available to do the job (try making your sandwiches ‘at speed’ in the morning using a particularly crumbly un-sliced granary loaf and you’ll see what I mean).

What I am questioning is the use of sliced bread in providing a positive ‘benchmark’ for all things novel….

Give me a ‘proper’ loaf any day !

As an aside, it’s also interesting to speculate what iconic product sliced bread itself might have been seen as ‘better than’ when it first arrived - other than the obvious, of course….

First Published 7.6.23

*Footnote on the 'housewife':

Yes, this remarkable human ‘phenomenon’ did exist back then, despite some recent attempts to expunge her from the historical record on the ‘altar’ of PC. I, like many others of my generation, owe the benefits of my early upbringing to one of its practitioners.  Most of these pillars of society were highly committed to their key role in supporting family life and expert at what they did, managing their households with ‘rods of iron’ and putting their husbands’ pathetically inadequate culinary and domestic skills to shame. They were often faced with the task of raising their offspring virtually single handed, and did so selflessly and (usually!) without complaint. Their ‘passing’ was a sad loss indeed.

PS: In case anyone asks...no, I'm not employed by the Unsliced Bread Marketing Board (UBMB)...